"Father of the Blues" W. C. Handy Signed Sheet Music Dated 1945 Autograph World

Description

Up for auction the
"Father of the Blues" W. C. Handy Hand Signed Sheet Music Dated 1945.
This item is certified authentic by
Autograph World
and comes with their Letter of Authenticity.
ES-3383G
William Christopher Handy
(November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the
Father of the Blues
. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American
blues
music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style (
Delta blues
) with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.
Handy was an educated musician who used elements of
folk music
in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers. Handy was born in
Florence, Alabama
, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a small church in
Guntersville
, a small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography,
Father of the Blues
, that he was born in a log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an
African Methodist Episcopal
minister after the
Emancipation Proclamation
. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been preserved near downtown Florence. Handy's father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" and ordered him to "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the
cornet
. He joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.
While growing up, he apprenticed in
carpentry
,
shoemaking
, and
plastering
. He was deeply religious. His musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played in his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as inspiration the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".
He worked on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace, where he learned to use his shovel to make music with the other workers to pass the time. The workers would beat their shovels against hard surfaces in complex rhythms that Handy said were "better to us than the music of a martial drum corps." Handy would later recall this improvisational spirit as being a formative experience for him, musically: "Southern Negroes sang about everything...They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect." He reflected, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call Blues".
In September 1892, Handy travelled to
Birmingham, Alabama
, to take a teaching exam. He passed it easily and gained a teaching job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (the current-day
Alabama A&M University
) in
Normal
, then an independent community near
Huntsville
Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby
Bessemer
. In his time off from his job, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming
World's Fair in Chicago
, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.
After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to
Evansville, Indiana
. He played the cornet in the
Chicago World's Fair
in 1893. In Evansville, he joined a successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist, and trumpeter. At the age of 23, he became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels. In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada. Handy was paid a salary of per week. Returning from Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence. In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in
Henderson, Kentucky
, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence. Around that time,
William Hooper Councill
, the president of what had become
Alabama A&M University
, the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay, hired Handy to teach music. He became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group. In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of popular black music. The state was mostly rural and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton
plantations
in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels. After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to return to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the
Knights of Pythias
in
Clarksdale, Mississippi
.
[3]
Handy and his family lived there for six years. During this time, he had several formative experiences that he later recalled as influential in his developing musical style. In 1903, while waiting for a train in
Tutwiler
, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy overheard a black man playing a
steel guitar
using a knife as a
slide
.
About 1905, while playing a dance in
Cleveland, Mississippi
, Handy was given a note asking for "our native music".He played an old-time Southern melody but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Handy assented, and three young men with well-worn instruments began to play. Research by Elliott Hurwitt for the
Mississippi Blues Trail
identified the leader of the band in Cleveland as
Prince McCoy
. In his autobiography, Handy described the music they played: They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the better word.
Handy also took influence from the square dances held by Mississippi blacks, which typically had music in the
G major
key. In particular, he picked the same key for his 1914 hit, "
Saint Louis Blues
".